If any film deserves to have the level of success Zombieland enjoyed, Tucker & Dale vs Evil is that film. Think Shaun of the Dead with hillbillies and you're pretty much there. This is horror comedy at its finest: buckets of blood, brilliant gags and nods to horror films from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to Hatchet to Wrong Turn and The Burning as well as plenty more besides.
Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) look like creepy inbred cannibal hillbillies. In reality, they're misunderstood and harmless best friends who want nothing more than to renovate their newly purchased lake-side holiday cabin. The fact that it looks like they bought it from Leatherface and Jason Voorhees passes the pair completely by. On the way to their new retreat, they run into some college kids on a camping trip. Dale is drawn to the beautiful Alison (Katrina Bowden) and, egged on by Tucker, he attempts to ask her out. He is awkward and lacks confidence, scaring Alison and reinforcing the other college kids' view of him as a creepy hillbilly. Unbeknownst to either group, they head on to the same lake. Deciding to go skinny dipping, Chloe (Chelan Simmons, showing off her magnificent boobs) and three of the guys interrupt Tucker and Dale's late-night fishing trip. The squabbling pair startle Alison, who is stripping down to her underwear on a nearby rock and she falls into the water and hits her head. Dale dives into the water and fishes her out, dragging her into their boat. Tucker shouts at the others that they've rescued Alison but they panic and think they've kidnapped her. Then the fun begins.
Alison, taken back to their cabin and bandaged up, is initially terrified but warms to Dale and the two end up playing board games while Tucker cuts logs with a chainsaw. The college kids find the cabin and just as one of them plucks up the courage to approach, Tucker bursts a bee hive with his chainsaw and sprints towards the college kid, waving the weapon at the furious bees in a superb parody of Leatherface. The college kids begin dying in fantastically inventive and outrageously hilarious ways, none of which Alison witnesses as she ends up being banged on the head again. When she comes to and discovers the carnage outside the cabin, Dale reveals that Tucker has been kidnapped by her friends, led by the increasingly demented Chad (Jesse Moss). When Alison tries to use her budding psychology skills to broker a peace agreement and clear up the misunderstanding between Chad and Dale over a cup of tea, things turn explosively worse.
All comedy horror should be as brilliant as Tucker & Dale. Tudyk and Labine have wonderful chemistry as the title pair. They bounce off each other superbly and make you really believe that they're lifelong best friends. Bowden could have fallen back into playing a stereotypical bimbo, but she doesn't. She's really game, delivering an energetic and funny performance. Horror fans will have a blast spotting the little nods and winks to genre classics and even if you aren't familiar enough with the genre to spot every reference, the satire isn't too narrow to pass you by. It's only eighty-eight minutes and it skips by, never letting up in the fabulous gore and the hysterical jokes. But that's not all this film has to offer. What many other comedy horrors lack underneath their exterior of blood and jokes, Tucker & Dale has in bucket-loads: heart. At its core, it's a film about friendship and tolerance.
My one minor quibble with Tucker & Dale is that the very brief prologue should have come at the end, either during the credits or as a post-credits scene. I would seriously recommend skipping it. Just go straight to the title card, which is followed by the "3 days earlier" tag and the start of the film. It spoils the ending somewhat, much like the theatrical trailers (both red and green). Give them a miss, take my word for it and enjoy a fantastic film.
9 out of 10.
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